GERMAN
SOCIAL DEMOCRATS OFFER OLIVE BRANCH TO SWORDSMEN
[The following ironic bit of commentary by H. Hagedorn, entitled "Duelist Demo-, crats," has been translated by World Outlook from the January 23 issue of the Frankfurt Express International. ]
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Dueling fans among the West German students have cause for rejoicing. The SPD [Sozialistische Partei Deutschlands] leadership has publicly declared that it no longer considers itself bound by the 1954 party congress resolution barring members of student dueling societies from membership in the party.
The SPD leadership is to be warmly congratulated for turning its back on this outmoded.resolution. This is new evidence that the SPD can rid itself of all the muddleheaded socialist ballast not already thrown overboard by the Bad Godesberg party congress. [In the name of "modernism," virtually all of the historic program of socialism that ot remained formally a part of the SPD platform was eliminated by this party congress. : The way in which Brandt and Wehner carried out this rapprochement with the student sword-wielders is particularly praiseworthy. It would have been cumbersome to have voted out the old resolution. The party of progress does well to avoid becoming entangled in old-fashioned democratic procedures.
The SPD's reconciliation with the duelists is also consistent from a social and political angle -- those who support rearmament ought likewise to endorse the use of cold steel in testing and hardening men. Furthermore, anyone seriously drawing away from the. mistaken notions of socialism is well advised in taking into consideration the traditional groups that stand for the concept of an elite. . To put it briefly -- 5,000 Burschenschaften [members of an old patriotic students association], plus 6,000 members of the Coburg Convent of Dueling societies and 8,000 in the Corps can now both vote for. the SPD as well as demand satisfaction of it.
Does anyone care to be reminded that the student Corpsman Otto von Bismark was the one who outlawed our socialist forebears?
What_Mao's Thought Can Do for You
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